last night we went to see a show called hyperlynx. it was a 90-minute one-woman monologue that focused on globalization and the (late) author’s opinion thereof. everyone in the class HATED it, some more vehemently than others. i think i’ve decided that i thought it was an interesting failure. i think that i shared this opinion with one other person (out of about 50 or so). I thought it was interesting because of some of the topics that were… well… lectured about. (that was the main complaint of the other theatre majors – that it was less a theatrical play and more like a lecture thinly disguised.) the thing is, i agreed with pretty much everything everyone else said about the play – it was badly written (as a play), haphazardly acted, and very much a lecture. it was pretty cliche… and the main character wasn’t exactly sympathetic. however, the author brought up topics and issues i am interested in. these things held my interest for the first half. of course, the play was incredibly anti-american and very one-sided in it’s presentation.
according to the playwright, america is a country founded on “genocide and hypocrisy” because American settlers killed native americans and stole their land. okay. so… the first point is that these settlers were not at first “american.” they were europeans who became americans. my second point is that civilisation was founded on genocide. i mean, come on… everyone killed everyone “else”. in huge numbers. americans were not the first, nor have they been the last.
the second half of the play was written in reaction to september 11th. unfortunately, the author was suffering from leukemia while the play was written and died a few months later. i got the feeling that if he had been well and had continued living… he would have rewritten this play. a lot. what we got to see was probably a first or maybe even second draft, probably written off the top of his head and in a moment of passion. as such, it was very muddled and pretty heavy-handed. some people were pretty offended. i personally was not offended, per se… but i thought it was notbale how incredibly tactless some of the writing was. especially considering this guy was a hero of the british theatre.
while i was watching the play, i really was fascinated. i was also half asleep… before the play. i mean, i woke up some when i watched it, but i wasn’t exactly processing all of the information. i suppose i was in a susceptible state, but i was interested. by intermission, everyone else had pretty well decided they hated it. one of our professors was apparently furious.
of course, i think that’s one of the wonderful things about theatre… its ability to piss people off. in this case it was sort of unfocused and shabbily written, but it still caused some pretty extreme reactions in my classmates.
aaron and i had another run-in last night. during the intermission, we were talking about the play. he was telling me that he thought it was too much like a lecture and that he didn’t like it, when he suddenly cut off what he was saying and said “but you’re making that face again where you know you’re right and you think you’re better than me…” or something like that. i can’t remember exactly what he said, but it that was the gist. apparently i was smirking or smiling or making a face something like that. this made him think i thought he was a moron or something.
thing is, i was just making a face. i disagreed with him, but i didn’t think he was a moron… or that i was better than him. i just disagreed with him. he freaked out, though, and in reaction i snapped back at him… “i’m glad you know what i’m thinking aaron. thank you for telling me.”
the whole thing was just a mess because he does this all the time. i do something to me that seems insignificant, or that i’m not even thinking about doing, and it pisses him off. and he remembers things, things that didn’t even cross my mind. and he brings them up. after i saw him in grease, i wrote him on aim and said “his hair looked funny”. he brought this up a week and a half later because he said it was an underhanded compliment… that because i hadn’t said anything about his performance it was actually a put down. this, of course, mystified me to no end, because it was a joke. taken completely out of context because we didn’t actually have a conversation.
it’s actually pretty frustrating dealing with him sometimes. we’ve actually gotten to know each other a lot better so far this semester, but we grate on each other’s nerves in ways i haven’t experienced in a long time.
i would write more, but the lab is getting crowded and i must go. leave comments. they make me happy.